As I remain on temporary hiatus, of necessity this post shall be brief. I was sent a link to an outstanding article by one of my readers. After reading it the time it took me to decide to run it here was all of two seconds.

From Perspective, the article is entitled "The tale of three presidents: the Playboy, the Cowboy, and the Wonder Boy". Written by Dr. Michael Youssef it is one of the most insightful articles I have read to date on the performance of three U.S. Presidents over the last eighteen years and how it set the stage for a rising extreme radical Islam.

Excerpts followed by link.

Most social scientists would agree that world events do not happen in a vacuum. Political forces, whether they are accidental or deliberate, in succession or a single action, give rise to political and social movements.

After the fall of the Shah of Iran, Islamic expansionists began looking for ways and means by which to accomplish their religious dreams. Empowered by "divine mandate" and fueled with lots of oil, they believed the world must be dominated by Islam and the Sharia. Yet, in order to claim victory, they had to overcome their greatest obstacle: the power of the United States.

A common belief among these extremists was that American power is more perceived than real, and in the 1990s they began to test their theory. It did not take long to realize that President Bill Clinton's "interests" would distract him from acts of international terrorism. To the extremists, he was simply a 60's generation man who clearly wanted "love, not war." Thus, a series of tests began. Embassies in Lebanon, Kenya, and Tanzania were bombed. The response of the "Playboy President" confirmed their suspicions. Clinton issued many verbal threats but nothing happened.

Then the tests became more daring. The bombing of the USS Cole was designed to reveal the vulnerability of the U.S. military. The response from the White House was from the same chapter, same verse -- "the perpetrators of these heinous acts must be brought to justice." And again, nothing happened. But what was really telling to these Jihadists was that, if Clinton's plan to deflect the scandal of Monica Lewinski meant throwing a million-dollar bomb on a ten-dollar tent in Afghanistan and bombing an aspirin factory in the Sudan, they were free and clear to plan, plot, and scheme for bigger things.

Make no mistake about it: all of the long-term planning and maneuvering that led to September 11, 2001, was going on during the Playboy President's watch. But these Islamists misread the domestic focus of the incoming "Cowboy President" as weakness. All in all, the final exam took place on the Cowboy President's watch. Did they really know that he would respond with such force in Afghanistan? I highly doubt it. They had become accustomed to verbal threats without action. They assumed that the Texas governor promoting education and a couple of other issues would not be willing to decimate their centers of power. As they say "Give the devil his due," he disrupted their hornets' nest and kept America safe for the remainder of his presidency.

All the while, the Islamic groups pressed their wealthy Muslim brothers to use their investments in the West for Jihadi purposes. They pressed them to strategically use their billions of dollars invested in Europe and Britain with strings attached. What were these strings? Demand from European governments for more mosques, more acceptance of Sharia law, more Islamic districts, more visible Islamic symbols (including Islamic banking principles and openness to immigrants from Islamic countries). Clearly, this strategy worked -- and now the Muslim expansionists smelled the air of success for the first time.

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